Rose Marie Bravo Biography

Chief Executive Officer of Burberry

Born Rose Marie La Pila, c. 1951, in the Bronx, New York, NY; daughter of
a hair-salon owner and a seamstress; married and divorced; married William
Jackey (a retired furniture executive), c. 1983; children: two
stepchildren.
Education:
Graduated from Fordham University, c. 1971.

Career

Began career as a trainee buyer for Abraham & Strauss, 1971; hired
as assistant buyer, Macy's Department Store chain, 1974; promoted
to buyer and then administrator; in 1983 became group vice president for
cosmetics, contemporary sportswear, and coats, then senior vice president
of merchandising until 1988; served as chief executive of I. Magnin
stores, 1988-92; president of Saks Holdings, Inc., 1992-97; joined
Burberry as chief executive, 1997.

Sidelights

American retail executive Rose Marie Bravo led the British raincoat maker
Burberry Ltd. into an unprecedented turnaround since taking over as chief
executive officer in 1997. Bravo's talents, which include a savvy
marketing expertise and impeccable fashion sense, have served to double
sales for the once-beleaguered company and make it into one of the
youngest, hippest luxury brands. She is one of the highest-paid executives
in Europe, and has been called "a brand name herself in the fashion
world" by
Fortune
magazine's Lauren Goldstein.

Rose Marie Bravo

Born in the early 1950s, Bravo is a native of the New York City borough of
the Bronx, where she was grew up as Rose Marie La Pila. Her father ran a
hair salon on 181st Street, and while her mother was a seamstress by
profession. As a young teen, Bravo won admission to the prestigious Bronx
High School of Science, and went on to Fordham University, also in the
Bronx. She majored in English literature, and graduated almost two years
ahead of schedule by taking summer classes.

Bravo's first job after college had little to do with her choice of
major: in 1971, she was hired as a trainee buyer for Abraham &
Strauss, a New York City department store chain. Three years later, she
moved on to Macy's Department Stores, the landmark Manhattan
retailer, with a job as an assistant buyer. She moved up through the ranks
to become an administrator, and in 1983 was promoted to the position of
group vice president responsible for cosmetics, contemporary sportswear,
and coats for Macy's; later in the decade she became senior vice
president of merchandising.

In the department-store acquisition mania of the 1980s, Macy's
acquired I. Magnin, the California-based retailer with a reputation as the
West-Coast home for luxury fashion. Bravo was tapped to head
it in 1988, and relocated to Magnin headquarters in San Francisco. Over
the next four years, she led the company through an impressive turnaround,
despite some immense odds, including the gutting of its recently renovated
Los Angeles flagship store in the 1992 riots. That same year, Bravo took
over as president of Saks Fifth Avenue, a high-end retailer with a
reputation for carrying an impressive international roster of designer
goods. Bravo began adding a number of hipper luxury labels with a younger
target market to its sales floor, such as Gucci and Prada, and made its
cosmetics counters a leading launch space for new fragrance lines from
designers.

Bravo was said to be in possession of a fabled personal Rolodex, giving
her access to some of the most famous names in fashion, and used it to
revitalize Saks and make it a destination for fashionistas and younger
shoppers alike. Her impressive turnaround helped the retailer emerge as a
publicly traded company in 1996, but there were industry rumors that she
and Saks chair Philip Miller did not agree on some issues. In 1997, Bravo
shocked the fashion world by taking over at Burberry, the venerable
British raincoat manufacturer that had fallen on hard times. Founded in
1856 by Thomas Burberry, the man who invented gabardine, the company was
known for its high-end raincoats with a distinctive signature plaid. But
its British parent company, Great Universal Stores (GUS), was said to have
neglected it over the years, and had sacrificed brand prestige for profit
by selling goods in bulk on the so-called "gray market" in
Asia.

Once again, Bravo left her hometown for a new job, moving to London and
beginning what are known as her trademark 12-hour days in a rather
unprepossessing office space above Burberry's London factory. She
closed some of the costly raincoat factories that were still in England,
installed new computer and manufacturing systems, and secured the services
of a young Italian-American designer, Roberto Menichetti, to retool the
Burberry look. Menichetti designed a line of Burberry women's
clothing that made a stunning runway debut at the ready-to-wear
collections in 1999. There was also an ad campaign—once again,
likely using Bravo's unerring ability to call in favors—shot
by
Vogue
photographer Mario Testino and featuring models Kate Moss and Stella
Tennant, whose own ultra-hip, "Cool Britannia"-identities
helped reinvigorate the Burberry brand immensely.

Under Bravo's guidance, Burberry morphed into Prorsum, the high
fashion line, then a core collection called Burberry London and, thirdly,
a younger, hipper line of clothing with the label "Thomas
Burberry." The results were stunning: in 2001, the British journal
the
Economist
claimed that the country "is in the grip of Burberry mania. Two
years ago, the label was shunned by all but Asian tourists for its naff
plaid-lined raincoats that not even dead men would be caught wearing.
Today, everyone from Posh Spice to Cherie Blair, who wore Burberry to the
state opening of Parliament, is sporting its signature camel, black and
red plaid design." Valued as a company worth $360 million in 1997
when Bravo took over, in seven years that figure had increased nearly ten
times, to $3.4 billion.

Bravo's London triumph had not been an easy one, she later noted.
"Burberry was a mess," she told the
Economist.
"I had many evenings of tears. My parents visited me and asked:
'You left Fifth Avenue for this?'" But her faultless
sense of what the fashion world wanted next was recognized several times
over by her GUS bosses, and she is one of the most well-compensated
executives in the retail industry. In 2002, she topped the list of the
highest-paid European executives with a $9.2 million salary package.
Though Bravo rarely gives interviews, she has said more than once that her
rise to the upper echelons of fashion retailing was not that unusual,
given her original start in cosmetics. There, she noted, sharp business
minds were already commonplace, and her role models were from an earlier
generation, such as Estée Lauder and Helena Rubenstein. "If
you've been given this road map and you see that others have gone
before you and achieved, you never have in your mind the notion of
failure," a journalist from Glasgow's
Herald
newspaper, Beth Pearson, quoted Bravo as saying. "You have the
notion that you can do it too, if you're good enough and smart
enough and make the right decisions."

Sources

Economist,
February 3, 2001, p. 7.

Forbes,
April 3, 2000, p. 84.

Fortune,
November 9, 1998, p. 154.

Herald
(Glasgow, Scotland), August 7, 2004, p. 17.

Time,
February 16, 2004, p. 30.

WWD,
April 18, 1988, p. 75; September 5, 1997, p. 1.

—Carol Brennan

User Contributions:

Hi, I just wanted to know why Rose Marie La Pila, changed her name to Bravo. As you can see that is my maiden name is Bravo and i was just wondering (interested)in knowing why and when, what was the reason for changing her last name to Bravo?
Thank you, Marie Bravo Valdez
From Dublin, Ireland

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